Online petition to preserve retired Living Greyhawk adventures

[IronGolem]

There is a movement afoot to appeal to the RPGA to change its policy of retiring LGH adventures after tournament use. The goal would be for the RPGA to allow the retired adventures to be made available for home campaigns and general use for the community at large, provided the necessary concessions are made to protect copyrighted content and authors' rights. If you would like to be a part of this movement, I encourage you to sign the online petition at http://alternat.celeonet.fr/lg/

Also, please spread the word.

Don

 

[howandwhy99]

Looks like a good cause.

A friend of mine wrote one of these adventures, but I never picked any up to find out which one.

 

[kenobi65]

As has been pointed out in the mirror thread on the WotC LG board...this change has already been made. The rights to Living Greyhawk modules now return to the authors once the modules are retired from RPGA play. The authors are free to re-release them in any format they see fit, although the contract requires them to remove any WotC-owned intellectual property (i.e., place names, deity names, etc.)

 

[IronGolem]

Yes, we are aware of the existing contract whereby the authors regain their rights to the material (sans relevant Greyhawk content) at the termination of the tournament run. What we are looking for is a way to easily disseminate that material (should the authors be interested) to an interested fan base, and to explore ways in which the author might not be required to heavily revise the scenarios.

 

[kenobi65]

What we are looking for is a way to easily disseminate that material (should the authors be interested) to an interested fan base

If you're looking for the RPGA to handle that dissemination, my personal advice is "think about other options." The RPGA's system can barely handle distributing the current modules. I find it highly unlikely that they'd be willing to then take on the responsbility of reformatting and redistributing the retired modules as well, especially if there's no money involved.

and to explore ways in which the author might not be required to heavily revise the scenarios.

As I'm sure you're aware, it's all about Intellectual Property. WotC is pretty vigilant about not letting people distribute things using their IP.

For an example: there's an independent, Living-style campaign out there called Legends of the Shining Jewel; LSJ was originally part of the RPGA's Living City campaign (set in the Forgotten Realms). When Ryan Dancey bought Living City from the RPGA, he didn't want the part that became LSJ, and so the writers of LSJ took it independent. The RPGA (and WotC) eventually noticed that LSJ was distributing modules (even though they weren't charging any money for them) that used WotC's IP (LSJ was still set in the Realms) and forced LSJ to revise all their modules and materials, removing any non-OGL material.

In order for the RPGA to allow the LG authors to keep the Greyhawk material (which is Intellectual Property, and not OGL) in those retired modules, they'd probably need to license the IP to the authors for the redistribution...and this doesn't seem to me to be something that they'd be likely to do.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I have signed it.

 

[IronGolem]

It's true that there are some issues surrounding IP that need to be addressed. This petition is simply to see if there is significant interest among the fans to warrant pursuing it any further with the RPGA and WotC. If so, we would initiate a dialog with the respective parties and determine what options are available. Who would distribute what and who could use who's IP won't be decided until way down the line.